Wacko Search Results

As soon as they [the user] encounter a wacko result, it reduces their confidence in the search. For some users, this makes it unlikely they’ll continue using Search as a reliable method for completing their objective, since it works unpredictably.

That pretty much sums up my first experience with Cuil, a new search player with VC funding, managed and founded by a few former Google employees that seem keen on changing the search game.

Kudos to them for braving the “search space” or whatever it is called now, exclaiming mightily:

Rather than rely on superficial popularity metrics, Cuil searches for and ranks pages based on their content and relevance.

They completely failed for me on relevance, though as I subjected them to the first test almost any blogger will perform: searching for your own name. While most of the results were relevant, what was associated with them threw me for a loop.

There are several wacko results on that page, including an image of a crying baby beside my name as an A List Apart author, indexing a URL that is a textdrive subdomain. Peculiar.

There is the book that I contributed to, with several other fine authors: Web Standards Creativity, referencing an image that shows the cover of Beginning JavaScript with DOM Scripting and Ajax by Christian Heilmann. Odd. (I mean the result, not Christian. <cheek>Or do I?</cheek>)

8 Comments

This seems typical of what I have seen others reporting (NSFW feature at the Register: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/29/cuil_launch/ ). Yesterday, I searched for my book’s short title of “Advanced Ajax” and it brought up the description of my book with someone else’s cover. Today, it returns no search results.

Worse still, searching for Clearleft comes up with a picture of Morae – one of Silverback’s competitors! (Silverback being a Clearleft product for those that didn’t know)http://www.cuil.com/search?q=Clearleft

Ah, yes, did a similar thing…moments after reading about it (via Mashable), did a search for a company I know quite well, and then found (to my amusement) that some of its images were being re-used results for similar sites of rival companies….classy! At that point I realised something wasn’t right with Cuil and I haven’t been back to it since. I quite like the look of it otherwise.